Friday, September 8, 2017

The other half has been listening to a series of lectures by Professor Yuval Noah Harari. This Doctor Of Cleverness contemplates the theory that
all human beings are miserable, consumed with negative thoughts and irrational
drives, and that we should universally be taking endorphin (probably in the form
of an anti-depressant) just to make it- life- all a bit more bearable. And in
some ways he is right, given that high levels of adrenalin lead to an increased
endorphin demand so some very stressed people live a life chronically short of endorphin.

For those patients who believe that going on
anti-depressants are a sign of weakness, I explain it’s a bit like saying to a
diabetic ‘why don’t you produce your own insulin?’. There are those of us whose
pancreas can fail within a couple of years of birth and they will be insulin
dependent all their lives just as there are those whose brain produces very little
natural endorphin, and they will suffer from chronic depression unless they are
medicated with endorphin.

There are those of us whose pancreas and hypothalmus and pituitary
are incredibly responsive to changes in the blood stream. The homeostatic
mechanisms work really well to pull everything back into the mid line. The
pancreas will respond to huge amounts of chocolate by producing insulin and the
brain will respond to stress by producing endorphin so keeping ‘mood ‘on an
even keel.

In between is a group whose pancreas is getting a little bit
tired so it does its best, but when the blood sugar level goes too high, the
pancreas goes into semi retirement and the sugar is left in the blood stream (
not good). That sort of person can be managed by diet and exercise and then small amounts
of oral medication. Equally, the stressed human being who tries to combat their
stress with yoga, exercise, taking the dog out or just having a good laugh, can
easily learn to stimulate their own endorphin and stop them tipping into
depression.

Until the stress gets too much and then we all might need a
little help.

And I think I may have found the reason for this. It’s all
the fault of Michael and Stanley.

They have led us all to believe that the first hominids
split from the ape genetic line around 7 million years ago in Central Africa
and then they hung about for 5 million years before venturing anywhere else.
Indeed, why should they as it was probably nice and warm in Africa.

But now it
seems, as I think has been mentioned before on MIE, that fossils of an ape like
hominid, importantly with human teeth, have been found in Greece and Bulgaria
and they predate the ones from Central Africa by 2 million years… or 200 000
years or…. Well a wee while anyway.

In the terms of DNA, we have always called the common
ancestor from Central Africa 'mitochondrial Eve'. The new creature has been
called Graecopithecus Freybergi but for sake of simplicity I’m going to call
her 'Mitochondrial Agnes'. So Agnes was on
the go, up and running around the olive groves long before Mitochondrial Eve wandered further than
her back garden.

Which means we have two missing links.

Professor Nikolai
Spassof from the Bulgarian academy of sciences and extreme intelligence says that
the climate in that area of Eastern Europe ( in this case, Greece and Bulgaria) meant forest gave
way to open savanna and pushed on the evolutionary idea that getting up on your
hind legs to have a look might have some benefits. He then makes rather a bad
pun about being it being the first steps of human kind.

Yes, somebody make that
pun before Jeff and for that we must all be thankful.

Mitochondrial Agnes is a member of the hominin tribe and is
a direct mother of homo sapiens. She displays the start of human teeth - flat molars at the back, which are found in animals where their main diet
is grain or plant base – grinders rather than rippers.

I know Grinder has now a
new meaning but refer back to last week’s blog!

If you think of the depths of that mitochondrial DNA and
it’s blueprinting of everything, it’s interesting. As you probably know the
mitochondria are the little Duracell batteries in every cell, they produce
energy for that cell to function. And in the case of mitochondrial Agnes and indeed Eve,
they started a long walk North taking that genetic blueprint with them.

And that’s where the trouble started.

If we can quote Billy Connolly – I think I’ve said it before
in this blog, ‘what kind of idiot stood on the North East Coast of Ireland and
said, look at that country over there the weather’s even worse than here. Let’s go and
live there’. And so the descendants of mitochondrial Agnes with her little
cells designed for the Greek savanna landed in Glasgow and was probably the
first hominid to invent the hat, warm socks and to develop depression from deprivation of sunlight.

XX homanis Glasgea. In the pub!

It has been raining here now for 40 days and nights and
while we owe mitochondrial Agnes a huge debt of gratitude for our being, she
should also be made responsible for everything that now stresses the human
brain – pension schemes, BREXIT, Donald Trump, Scottish Nationalism,
Nationalism of any form, the trickle down economic theory, athlete’s foot,
reality TV and Piers Morgan.

So, I’m sure if I think about this long enough I can blame
our weather on our blog mates from Africa as they SHKB. ( should have known
better.)

And I am of course a huge fan of Douglas Adams – he said, human beings made a terrible mistake to come down from the trees and walk on the land and
that further research was now suggesting we should have never bothered leaving
the sea.

There are 3 things I know about dolphins; they are bright,
they live in a family group and the male dolphin is the only mammal on the face
of the planet with a permanent erection. They are also one of the few animals
that look as though they are always smiling. Dolphins are persecuted, caught in
tuna nets, used by the Navy to test sonar and deploy bombs, and made to jump
through hoops to satisfy evil little humains bratti who think it’s funny.
But just imagine how good a dolphin’s life would be if Agnes and Eve had just
stayed where they were.

Wow, now we must add hominin diet tribe to the source of all life. As for the dolphin's unique condition (you just knew I couldn't resist commenting on that) there is rival to that claim over here in Greece in the form of Pan, whose instrumental inspiration leads some to call him the first coming of Peter Pan.

Sorry, it was just all this talk about organs, it made me Bach at a more thoughtful response.

There is hope yet. The modern human is not a specie built to last. We are sure to destroy ourselves, (hopefully long before we've destroyed everything else), then the planet will heal and return to its beautiful balance. A cartoon said it all. Two sad planets looking at a planet Earth. One gloomy planet to the other: 'She's got an infestation of humans.'